The Burning Boy
by amberdragongirl
Summary: Everyone was hurt by the war, and everyone will bear scars. This is Ginny's story. NB: Contains mentions of depression, cutting, and eating disorders.


**A oneshot about Ginny's life, and how it was affected by Harry and Voldemort.**_  
_

**I believe she has quite the story to tell - every character in the books was hurt by the war, and her, perhaps the most.**

**Contains mentions of depression, cutting and eating disorders.**

**All characters are owned by J. K. Rowling.**

**This is Ginny's Story.**

* * *

_Whilst Harry, Ron and Hermione were fighting a war, I was fighting myself. I was fighting to stay myself._

When I first met Tom, I was confused. I was lonely. I was bitter. I was the youngest in a large family, and that had its own pressures. I had to live up to expectations.

Everyone hated my family. It's hard being hated for your name – not your actions, not your personality, but your _name._ When I first moved to Hogwarts, I had it drilled into me that my family, and therefore, I, was the scum of the earth.

Everything I'd known and loved was ripped away and ridiculed.

And there was this boy – this famous, yet naive boy, whom everyone looked up to. And I wanted him. Because if he wanted me, then so would everybody else.

And he rejected me.

So I opened the fat, black diary, and scribbled down my thoughts and clung to the ephemeral words that blossomed in return, desperate for the intimate contact with a human.

(Creamy parchment and black blue ink (like my black blue thighs - punched myself again, worthless) mingling with the tears, dropping on the page - _can he feel them?- _the smell of candle wax, sound of the bells in the lonely night. Lonely, all alone in the library, you don't have friends here; you don't deserve friends, you only have Tom, Tom is your friend -_does he love me? - _let him love me please, like I love him -_I love you Tom-_)

And he betrayed me. The love of my life, my everything, betrayed me and tried to kill me.

(Cold green stone floors, snakes and water, cold face with snake eyes, laughing, so cold so angry so beautiful - _be mine_.)

He burned me all up, until there was nothing left. I was ashes, and dust.

(The boy plunged the dagger through the heart of my lover. I screamed inside.)

My fire was gone, spent.

(So stupid, worthless little girl almost killed Harry fucking Potter you deserve to die)

I wonder if he knew that he'd killed the part of me that I loved the most.

* * *

For years, I remained in that half-alive state. Pale, deadened, watching the world pass by, and wondering how it could go on.

I'd be lying if I said that I never took a knife to myself. I remember crouching on the floor of the girl's toilets, by the sink that opened the chamber, trying to take myself back to the vivid nightmare. Turning on the taps full blast, and letting the water swish down onto the hard stone floor. Pulling out a blade, dragging it across my thigh. Watching the blood mingle and disappear in the cold cold _cold_ water, like it did _that night._

(Too fast breath rushing cold dripping blood _are you there, Tom?_)

And sometimes, for a split second, it worked.

(Euphoria.)

Then I'd dry myself off and be on my way, back to my grey, grey life, with Myrtle's laughter ringing in my ears.

* * *

And occasionally, occasionally, I would feel everything at once, and it would all be too much, and I'd run into the Forbidden forest

(Hair messy, eyes wild, pounding feet, earthen floor, screaming, screaming for my Tom - _where are you?_)

Or I would punch myself in the frustration

(Remember to hide the bruises)

Or I'd stick a slender finger down my throat and try to purge up the feeling from inside of me, make myself pure.

It never fucking worked.

Sometimes, I'd go out with boys as a distraction, a way to break up my otherwise monotonous life. And we'd kiss and he'd rub his hands along my hipbones, but then I'd stop, because it was no use, I was as cold as the bottom of the Black Lake inside.

(If you kiss me now, you'll catch your death)

* * *

Then, one day, I looked at Harry Potter. He was screaming, in a rage. His face was white, his eyes bloodshot, and he was yelling abuse at Ron and Hermione at the top of his lungs.

And he looked at me.

And in his eyes I saw Tom.

I clung to him as hard and as fast as I could.

I got better at finding him. Soon, I could find the slither of Tom, the tiny _spark _in Harry's eyes, or face, or words, even when Harry was completely calm. Sometimes, his expression, or the way he tilted his head, or brushed his hair out of his eyes, or worded a sentence, took me back to the burning boy in the chamber, whose every movement was etched and branded into my head; like a shooting star crossing my eyes, and leaving behind its imprint forever - the rest of the sky remained black.

As I got better at finding Tom, I got _better_.

I stopped cutting and purging and running away, and clung to Harry desperately, the same way he clung to me in his moments of need.

And I fucking got it, then.

I was the only one that understood him. And that was alright.

Time went on, and we grew happier. His muscular frame fit with my (now curvier) body so smoothly, and we ate picnics and made snowman and fucking laughed and pretended he wasn't who he was.

Until the day he ran away.

* * *

I knew he wanted to break up, but I didn't believe it. He wasn't going to kill Voldemort. He couldn't.

He'd die, and I'd lose my Tom again.

(Tomtomtomtomtomtom)

And I had to get used to him not holding me at night, protecting me from the nightmares (ignoring the word 'Tom' forever on my lips while I was waking)

And I was empty, for a whole year.

I sat in Hogwarts, and continued with my studies, and didn't speak a word.

Until the day when he came through the portrait.

My boy, my boy (my Tom) come to save me.

And I remembered sadly how Harry wasn't Tom, he didn't burn me up completely and scatter my ashes to the winds; but he smouldered inside of me.

It was enough to melt away the cold, empty nothing. So it was enough.

And there was one, final battle. And Voldemort was killed. And I should be happy, so happy.

I had Harry back again. He was mine, all mine.

But; when I looked into his eyes – there was no Tom, anymore.

Harry left me even more empty than before.

* * *

And now all that's left is the husk of a boy, who murdered the love of my life.

Ruined my life at eleven fucking years old.

And I hate him.

I hate you, Harry Potter.

I want to burn again. I want Tom. I want Tom back. Not you, the Boy Who Lived to Kill.

Never you.

* * *

**Please review, and tell me what you think.**


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